Easter at Wammy's
by Dlvvanzor
Summary: Roger hated Easter. He hated the other holidays for good and valid reasons too, of course, but Easter was special. It was simply impossible to hide eggs from 72 genius children. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.**

**A/N: HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE! I was minding my own business, thinking about how much I like holiday-themed Death Note fanfics, and thought about writing one for Easter. Then this idea came to me in the shower, and here it is!**

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Roger had always hated Easter.

Of course, he hated the other holidays too.

Christmas, for example, was a pretty effective embodiment of chaos for Wammy's House. Mello ran around trying to convert everyone, when the majority of the House's residents were Atheist, and since most of the kids were also strong-willed, this caused a lot of conflict. Roger often had to pull Mello off of people, or people off of Mello. And, to the blond tsunami, it didn't matter if the other kid had 75 pounds on him- he'd still go for the fight. He had spent more than one Christmas in the infirmary, Matt quietly playing games at his side. So that was unpleasant. Then there was also the fact that Roger himself had to figure out what to give everyone. Fundage was not an issue for the House, but damn if it wasn't hard to get everyone a present that would make them smile. Often he just gave out $50 Visa gift cards and took the children on a fieldtrip to the nearby downtown area. No one complained, and Matt in particular always seemed overjoyed.

New Years was no-holds-barred terrible. 72 children staying up until midnight, and then freaking out and making as much noise as possible when the dreadful hour finally chimed in on their ancient grandfather clock. The little kids were always an over-tired, emotional wreck by midnight. The older kids tried to talk him into letting them have champagne, which he always refused. Roger started out every new year by cleaning up dozens of bottles of sparkling grape juice and streamers from poppers, because he simply couldn't expect their well-equipped cleaning staff to be able to do it all, alone, in one night, though they sure as hell tried.

Thanksgiving was awkward, being in England. But seven of their children came from America, and he knew that, even if they would never say it out loud, it was an important holiday to them with many family-related memories. As orphans, this was something they needed. Roger didn't have the heart to deny them. So he spent about a week figuring out what foods to prepare and how much, and then his cooking staff spent _another_ week cooking like madmen. He gave them a hearty bonus. Incidentally, Thanksgiving was the biggest day for coming out of the closet, which was something that happened with surprising frequency at Wammy's House.

Then there was Valentine's Day, which never failed to be dramatic. Linda could best be described as an artist, with 'hopeless romantic' as a close second for Best Descriptor. She also had an incurable fondness for Matt, openly homosexual, who spent most of the day _avoiding_ Linda. Mello, the _reason_ Matt was open, ignored this drama and spent most of the day stealing chocolate from little kids' boxes. And it never failed that one of these genius children would somehow manage to stab themselves in the hand with the scissors as they made their construction-paper Valentines. The older kids were even worse. Once they hit high school age, Valentine's Day became less of a day for crushes and candy and more of a day for getting laid. The year Matt and Mello were fifteen was a very traumatizing year for everyone, especially Linda.

Arbor Day was tolerable, but only because there were exactly two students who were excited about it.

Saint Patrick's Day, however, was not. The Irish students went on a rampage, and the others picked up on it. Everything became green, especially the things that were not supposed to be. Someone always managed to sneak in alcohol. Roger suspected the older kids and was most likely correct. An odd phenomenon: whoever was distributing the alcohol wouldn't let any kid under thirteen get any. The kids all seemed to know this rule, and thus, thirteen became a big rite of passage at Wammy's. It was probably whoever was the oldest, that did it, and passed the tradition on when they left, but Roger could never catch them. Regardless, drunken children stormed through the House on Saint Patrick's Day, and the day after, the coffee machines were always mysteriously empty.

April Fool's Day made Roger, quite frankly, want to kill himself. He dreaded it throughout all of March. In fact, Wammy always came back for April Fool's Day, just to make sure that his best and oldest friend didn't attempt to jump from the bell tower again. Genius children come up with genius pranks. Near usually ended up dyed some neon color by the end of the day, as hard as he tried to avoid it. Cellophane on the toilets? Roger _dreamed_ about April Fool's Day being that simple, and as the head of the House he was the target of a _huge_ percent of almost-harmless pranks. Roger, despite hiding all the sharp or potentially explosive objects, always ended the day with a limp, several new scars, and at least two ruined pieces of furniture. The record was five. He was still trying to figure out a way to get them to not celebrate this particular holiday. Of course, nothing ever happened to the visiting Watari.

Mother's Day and Father's Day were just plain... horrible. The two days _hurt_ to see. Roger had grown up in an orphanage, too- that was where he had met Quillsh- so he remembered exactly how hard the days were for the kids, no matter what their situation was. If their parents were dead, they missed them. If their parents abandoned them, they longed for them. If they had been removed from their parents because of abuse, they feared them. It was a terrible day with many tears, and Roger subtly filled the cafeteria with each child's favorite food and general comfort food. He wished that those two days did not exist.

Halloween was insane for reasons that should not be difficult to surmise. For one thing, L usually visited for the entirely transparent reason of getting candy. Any time L visited was exhausting for Roger. The kids went nuts. Linda clung to his hand the entire time, jabbering constantly and making him look at her art, which he did without complaint. Mello fell into an angry but awed, worshipful silence. Matt and L had a strange relationship. They completely ignored each other. Matt resented L a little, while knowing that it wasn't L's fault that Mello was so obsessed with being him. L understood this and left him alone. When they interacted, it was mutually respectful, brief, quiet, and with a reluctant fondness of each other. There was a sense of 'what could have been,' if only Matt had wanted to be L more than he had wanted Mello. Near followed L like a pale shadow, occasionally asking him questions at a whisper. Then, of course, there was the trick-or-treating, where the children were unleashed on the surrounding area and, unbeknownst to all concerned, followed carefully by several well-trained snipers, ready and willing to incapacitate anyone who tried to harm them. And then worse, there was the sugar high that followed for at least a week. That week made Roger want to curl up in a ball and weep.

But Easter. Roger really, _really_ hated Easter.

It wasn't because of the religion factor, either. Roger loved Jesus as much as the next Christian and was happy to celebrate his return from the dead. It wasn't because of the chocolate, which sent Mello into a predictable campaign for every morsel he could rip off from someone else's basket. It wasn't the fact that Linda dressed Near up as a sheep or a rabbit every year, or because of the therapist who had to be hired weekly for the next two months after it. It wasn't the egg dying, despite the fact that with 72 children, 200 eggs, and food coloring, nothing could possibly go wrong. (Roger knew exactly what could go wrong. The egg dying was always hosted outside, now, after having to replace the carpet 14 times.) It wasn't because of that plastic Easter grass that never, _ever_ came out of the carpet, or because of the chocolate wrappers that found their way _everywhere_ and smeared their chocolate remains into everything. It wasn't even because of the one student with the paralyzing fear of the Easter Bunny who, no matter how many times Roger assured him that the Easter Bunny didn't exist, refused to believe that the apparently fanged creature wouldn't come and kill him in the night.

It was, quite simply, because it was damn near impossible, with his extraordinarily ordinary IQ, to hide eggs from 72 freaky-geniuses who were training under L to be the world's next Greatest Detective Ever.

Impossible. No matter how creative he got, no matter how many eggs he hid, they were always all found within ten minutes. His goal was twenty minutes, but this still hadn't happened. They were simply too good at finding hidden things and following clues. They were trained in _tracking,_ for goodness sakes! They could practically follow his _scent_.

And Roger had done everything. He had hidden them high. He had hidden them low. Behind things, in things, above things, _taped to the underside of things_. He had hidden eggs in the hundreds of trees on House grounds, to no avail. He had buried them. He had tried hiding them in plain sight. One year, he had tried hiding just 72 and told each child they could only find one. That hadn't worked. Another year, he had hidden one thousand, with the help of the staff, which was even worse. These children simply couldn't be stopped. Indoors, outdoors, it didn't matter. They were trained to do this in their damn _sleep_, and nothing Roger could ever do or say would ever be able to make this yearly event take the twenty minutes Roger so badly wanted it to take.

Roger sighed and muttered to himself as he buried an egg ten feet underground in the middle of the soccer field and replaced the grass and dirt exactly as it had been, knowing that that would be one of the first eggs the children found.


End file.
